murderers, if it were not accompanied by a due admixture of fear to
keep it within bounds; and this fear, again, would make a man the
sport and laughing stock of every boy, if anger were not lying ready
in him, and keeping watch.

But it is _Schadenfreude_, a mischievous delight in the misfortunes of
others, which remains the worst trait in human nature. It is a feeling
which is closely akin to cruelty, and differs from it, to say the
truth, only as theory from practice. In general, it may be said of it
that it takes the place which pity ought to take--pity which is its
opposite, and the true source of all real justice and charity.

_Envy_ is also opposed to pity, but in another sense; envy, that is
to say, is produced by a cause directly antagonistic to that which
produces the delight in mischief. The opposition between pity and envy
on the one hand, and pity and the delight in mischief on the other,
rests, in the main, on the occasions which call them forth. In the
case of envy it is only as a direct effect of the cause which excites
it that we feel it at all. That is just the reason why envy, although
it is a reprehensible feeling, still admits of some excuse, and is,
in general, a very human quality; whereas the delight in mischief is
diabolical, and its taunts are the laughter of hell.

The delight in mischief, as I have said, takes the place which pity
ought to take. Envy, on the contrary, finds a place only where there
is no inducement to pity, or rather an inducement to its opposite; and
it is just as this opposite that envy arises in the human breast; and
so far, therefore, it may still be reckoned a human sentiment. Nay, I
am afraid that no one will be found to be entirely free from it. For
that a man should feel his own lack of things more bitterly at the